CommentaramaPolitics: January 2018

Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Trump's Speech

My wife got me to watch the speech. I was going to skip it.

1. Amazing speech. Perfect speech actually. Inspiring. Pro-American. Perfect understanding of America. Hopeful. Great list of achievements -- focused on average people.

2. The Democrats look like asses sitting through most of it, including most of the personal stories. So you don't want to honor firemen and parents and Marines, huh?

3. The left is going to go ape shit and rant about this speech until they pass out. And they will further alienate the public as they do and further convince themselves that disloyalty, anti-Americanism and hate are a winning strategy.

4. Trump appealed so well to middle America that I think this speech will shift the needle for his support.

Thoughts?

Sunday, January 28, 2018

Thoughts

Howdy. Some interesting things in the news this week.

● NPR, never a friend of the right, referred to the Handful of Chick's March as "tens of thousands of women marching on the anniversary of Trump's election." Tens of thousands. Not even hundreds of thousands. Tens of thousands. Last time it was supposedly five million. >100,000/5,000,000 = >0.02... that's a 98% drop in attendance. In the midst of the supposed harassment scandal of the eon, the moment women rise up and somethingsomething pose naked without needing to think men are looking at them, the Chick March lost 98% of its supporters. That's an NFL game with 1,200 spectators... a basketball game with 300... only 20 million served at McDonalds... a large Starbucks cup with only 0.4 ounces... two pennies on a dollar. TOTAL FAILURE!

● The left is LOSING THEIR MINDS over the economic news. Pimp-dresser and former drug dealer Jay-Z seems to think the lowest unemployment rate among blacks in history is a random thing and should be dismissed. He also cried when he heard Trump call all those shitholes shitholes. Pelosi and Wassername-Schulz ("I know nusssing!") both are crapping upon the $1,000 bonuses millions of people are getting because these millionaires think a $1,000 doesn't mean anything to most people. Talk about out of touch! Half on the left are denying reality, claiming there is no great economy in progress. The other half are trying to credit Obama.

Think about that. Obama had eight years to start the economic car and couldn't get the engine to turn over. He tried bailouts, tax hikes and all kinds of stupidity. None of it worked over eight years. His economic record was historically bad! Now, a year after he's long gone and after Trump's plan took over, Trump hits the gas and the economy takes off... and they think Obama deserve credit? Sorry, no sale.

● Apparently, proposing a path to citizenship for more people than Obama proposed is "a racist ransom note." I don't think the left will ever let Trump cut a deal to stop the deportations of the Dreamers because that will cut out yet another one of their appeals to fear. I can imagine Pelosi: "We lost the f*ggots out of our cult, I'm not losing the 'sp*cs too! Every percentage point is sacred!" And yeah, I think she's racist... most of the Democrats seem to be.

● There's a lot of talk about a 16% gender gap with women opposing Trump at 16% more than men support him. The left thinks this means they will win the midterms. BUT... (1) House races are local affairs for the most part, (2) in the Senate, the Democrats are defending 10 seats in states Trump carried, (3) the gender gap is less for the GOP (12%) than Trump, and (4) that gender gap is actually similar to gender gaps of the past.

I also doubt that woman and the left are as enthused as the MSM wants to claim. Police shootings no longer turn out crowds of blacks. The Handful of Chicks March was a dismal failure. The gays are off clubbing. Hispanics may turn out but they are generally unreliable as voters. There is no Muslim issue in the news... the Trump death camps never opened. White men and working class women must be feeling pretty Republican at the moment, now that they have jobs and are getting bonuses and everything seems to be getting better, and I'm sensing more and more Republicans/Independents becoming comfortable with Trump because of (1) his economic performance, (2) his foreign policy, which has calmed the world, (3) his adopting a calmer tone of late, and (4) the overreach and insanity of his opponents causing people to tune them out.

● Polls are showing that having two secret-lovers/rabid-anti-Trumps on the FBI team investigating Trump and exonerating Hillary was a bad idea. The FBI's credibility is crashing right now and people are dismissing the investigation. Win for Trump.

● So the flu is going to kill 50,000 people. 40 down, 49,960 to go. Call me unimpressed.

● The State of the Union looks like a disaster in the making for the left. Trump will apparently make an appeal for unity and then half a dozen leftists are going to outbid each other to spew hate. Not only is it a bad idea to appear insane, but it's even stupider to have six or seven people competing for a response. Even stupider, several of these will be celebrities... who refuse to recognize the fact that the public hates them when they go political. (See, e.g. Georgia special election). This should further help Trump to cement his new-found "calm and rational" image. Sounds like a win for Trump coming up.

● Finally, the founder of IKEA has died. Good luck putting together his coffin.

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Tuesday, January 23, 2018

It's a Wonder

You know, I check in at progressive (formerly known as: ~~progressive~~ ~~communist~~ ~~socialist~~ ~~liberal~~) places like Yahoo and Huffpo and I find myself amazed. How in the world can progressives not be winning if what these places say is true?

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Saturday, January 20, 2018

Andrew's Running Open Thread...

Since I'm trying to evade working today, I keep running across things to post. So I'll make this a running open thread. :)

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Thursday, January 18, 2018

It's The Economy, Stupid

The left (and Jeff Flake) must be furious. Have you seen the economic data?

● The stock market is at an all-time high.

● Jobless claims fell to a 45 year low this month... since February 1973.

● Home building is at the highest level since 2007.

● Since the GOP/Trump tax cuts have passed, company after company is announcing massive bonuses to employees, reinvestment in the US and repatriation. Apple is the latest, announcing $2,500 bonuses to all employees, the creation of 20,000 US jobs this year, the opening of new US campuses, the repatriation of $252 billion in overseas cash triggering $38 billion in tax payments, and investment of $350 billion in the US over the next five years.

That's impressive and it's only the latest company to make such promises. At least 80 other big companies have announced bonuses on the order of $1,000 per employee, pay raises, new investment, etc. Walmart is giving bonuses, hiking wages, offering new paid maternity leave, and is offering a form of payday loan without interest.

These are good times to work in corporate America.

Of course, the left is now desperately trying to give the credit to Obama, but I doubt anyone is buying that. Things really feel like the economic wheel had stopped under Obama and now the economy has started fresh. Don't forget either that at no point under Obama did the economy ever hit 4% GNP -- a first for Presidents -- and the leftist media machine was telling us that 4% wasn't possible anymore in the modern world. Current GNP is 5.3%.

● Lastly, do you remember how China had overtaken us to have the world's biggest economy? Do you remember how I told you this was BS and relied on faked data? Well, now we are being warned by the same people that China will overtake us in a decade. It wasn't true then and it's not true now. China's economy is about 75% of ours and is actually getting smaller by comparison. What's more, higher wages, corruption and awful demographics will keep China from getting much bigger before it begins to fall. Nothing to fear here, folks.

Thoughts?

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Tuesday, January 16, 2018

Hey Baby, More Harassment Thoughts

I have to say that it's been fascinating watching this #HarassMeToo "movement". They started out by seizing the moral high ground and destroying a handful of genuine predators. But then they blew it... badly. They decided to copy the Cultural Revolution. Now it's all falling apart as leftists are shocked to find themselves needing to defend their friends from the Trumped up charges (see what I did there?) of other leftists.

Some thoughts...

It's starting to look like a civil war to me. A group of French actresses have condemned the Metooers for overshooting and trying to create a sexless world. The chick who invented the Shitty Media Men list is under fire for irresponsibly ruining the careers of innocent men. Andrew Sullivan called the Metooers McCarthyites for their damnation by rumor and secret evidence... and he's right. Ashley Banfield blasted a woman for whining about a bad date on the #Harassmetoo list. She's worried that women like this are ruining whatever the Metooers have won (spoiler alert: they've won nothing). Others have noticed this too that women are complaining about things as minor as guys seeming "creepy." This is now a culture crime. Lots of people are complaining about the lack of due process. Alec Baldwin is blasting the attacks on Woody Allen for allegations that were investigated but never became criminal charges.

Basically, these Metooers have adopted the rules of the Cultural Revolution. Anyone can accuse anyone and they are instantly judged guilty by the mob. And those who speak against this star chamber justice are instantly labeled as standing in the way of the "culture" change. They become enemies of the new order. They must be made to grovel. Women who didn't wear black to the awards show found themselves attacked by Metooers. Seal attacked Oprah for being complicit in Weinstein's sexual assault and promptly found himself accused of sexual assault.

America Ferrara was upset that Oprah was concerned with the accused. She said that the ultimate punishment for these men should not be disclosed yet:

“Can’t we live in that space where it’s OK for perpetrators to be a little bit uncomfortable with what the consequences will be?”

How very Nazi-like. We'll tell you your fate after we have our fun making you sweat. Shameful.

Even more shameful is how these little fascists pretend that they bear no responsibility for their actions. Oprah asked an interesting question. She assembled a panel of ~~idiots~~ celebrities like Reese Witherspoon and America Ferrera. She pointed out that the Metooers had managed to bag a couple penisers, but then she asked,

“When somebody’s been accused of sexual harassment and loses their job, should they ever work again?”

Witherspoon rather pathetically responded, “I’m not here to make that decision.” Really? You appoint yourself judge and jury. You convict on secret evidence with no allowance for the accused to offer a defense. And then you pretend that you have no say in the lives being destroyed? Welcome to the Great Leap Forward.

You see the same thing from the Shitty Media Men list creator. We'll call her "Shitty Girl." Shitty Girl asks women to accuse men but then disclaims that she has any responsibility for what happens after the allegations are taken seriously. Basically, she's the secret policeman who pretends it's not her responsibility that the people she accuses are killed on the evidence she presents. Interestingly, her list also ranges from rapes to consensual affairs to "acting creepy."

I'm really struck how fascist this "movement" is behaving. These are not good or noble women. They are little Hitlers. They are the accusers of Salem, the secret police of every fascist regime, McCarthyites, Chinese mobs killing their betters, and... apparently... good liberals.

Anyways, consider this timeline:

1. Rose McGowan outs Weinstien... everyone tries to ignore it.
2. With it not going away, the enablers "bravely" attack the mortally wounded Weinstein and smear anyone who points out that they enabled him.
3. Groupthink sets in and anyone who doesn't blindly accept the group is smeared or accused of #youtoo.
4. The group declares victory and pats themselves on the back for changing the world... without having done anything.
5. All the parasites jump on board. They politicize this. They try to expand it to subjective annoyances. They are opportunists tying to find fame, angry ex-girlfriends trying to settle scores, and women who just like abusing authority.
6. The infighting starts between the McCarthyite/fascists who believe in guilty when accused and abuse of power as justice versus those who believe in due process, proof and redemption.

This is not a noble enterprise or moral cause.

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Sunday, January 14, 2018

The Irony Edition

Lots of great irony coming from the left this week.

● The Democrats in California and New York are tying to find ways to reduce the effect of the tax hike Trump has imposed with the new tax law. They're trying to make paying your state taxes a charitable deduction so it can be deducted there. Ironically, the only people who would benefit from this are rich people. Said differently, Democrats seek to cut taxes on the rich and ultra-rich.

● Jim Carrey, who was once funny before he gave his girlfriend VD and drove her to suicide, was whiiiiining about the false alarm in Hawaii. He whined that he woke up (from a bender no doubt) to discover that he had only 10 minutes to live (after scratching his VD-encrusted penis, no doubt). First, I wish that were true. Good riddance. Secondly, somehow I doubt that Hawaii is in any real danger even if Korea fires. Third, mistakes happen... whining about other people's mistake is white-trashy. Fourth, it's funny how VD-carrier Carrey is blaming Trump when the real cause is a bureaucrat... government is at fault you dumbass socialist. No irony there.

● A lot of immigrants from shithole countries are upset at Trump calling the places they fled shitholes. None of these shitholers apparently see the irony in that.

● California, a liberal paradise that (1) benefits from a century of pre-liberal economic power they live off of like worthless rich heirs, (2) benefits from overwhelming geographic advantages that feed heir economy, (3) benefits from the high tax subsidy that Trump just eliminated, and (4) has spent almost a trillion dollars to fight poverty over the past 15 years... has the highest poverty rate in the US. Let me repeat: smug, rich, liberal California has the highest poverty rate in the US. Not West Cousin-Luvin Virginia, not Kensucky, not Washington Third-World D.C. Nope. California.

● Pope Francis, whom I believe is named after a talking mule, says that letting our fear that immigrants will turn our country into a shitholy is a sin if we let those fears turn into hostility. Got it. So what about fear of Trump turning into Hostility? Are all those liberals sinners? Yes, they are. So where is the condemnation of them Father Selective?

● Still laughing that now that police body cams are showing that cops aren't gunning down innocent black kids that the black community is upset. Think about that.

Liberals. snicker snicker

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Friday, January 12, 2018

He's... RACIST LOL!

The left is horrified that Trump allegedly called various shithole countries "shithole countries." Truth hurts.

See when your country is rife with crime, rebels and functions on the basis of corruption... when part of your population kills little girls because they go to school or mutilates their genitals because "God" told you so... when your leaders have brought the country to near-absolute bankruptcy, your population has no work ethic, the biggest employer is narco gangs, and average people need to use fake cell phones, walls covered in broken glass and hired guns to avoid becoming victims of criminals... your country might be a shithole.

But that's not the point. The point is the cry racism motif.

See, all these idiots from Anderson "Weepy Boy" Cooper to the UN are whining that Trump saying this is racism... and I don't care. In fact, I doubt anyone really cares. Why? Because this is what happens when you cry wolf. Not a day doesn't pass that some idiot doesn't scream racism. Everything is racist... everything. Heck, we even hear that the very fact of being white makes you racist, as do words that have nothing to do with race like picnic and blackhole, being conservative is racist, history is racist, arresting black criminals is racist, standardized testing is racist, the quality of education by black teachers is racist, black cops are racist, white cops are racist, not being paid $15 an hour at the job you don't have is racist, connecting Islamic terrorism to Islam is racist, pollution is racist, highways are racist, enforcing laws is racist, not believing in a phantom troop of cops killing young black men is racist, the language itself is racist, not enough black women being raped in Hollywood was racist, and so on. Everything is racist. So who cares?

Racism is a dead charge. Oh, it may excite the losers who use it to explain away their failures and it may excite the leftists who use it to keep those losers in line, but no one else cares. And I can't see the public caring about Trump calling these shithole countries shitholes... especially now that the UN has condemned this as "racist." Let's not forget that the UN is a collection of shithole countries who have waged a decades long war against Jews, who protect mass murderers and look the other way as they use illegal weapons like nerve gas against their minorities. Talk about racist. So yeah, no. Shove your racism allegations.

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Wednesday, January 10, 2018

True "Fake News"

Do you remember when the term "fake news" came about? The idea came from the left and it was meant as a way to dismiss places like Brietbart from public consideration. Basically, this was an attempted power grab in which they hoped to grant themselves the power to regulate the news media. Then they could dismiss every conservative leaning site as "fake news" and then the machinery of oppression would kick in. The rest of the media could ignore them. Social media could block them. And good liberals would know that nothing those fakers said was accurate... or loyal. It was the creation of an enemies list.

The funny thing was that it struck me right away that this was a mistake because anyone could use this weapon against anyone. That meant the left's weapon could be turned on them. Sure enough, that happened. Within days, anyone accused of anything was calling the charge "fake news" and attacking the MSM sites that reported the charge. The sports world used it. Hollywood used it. Conservative commentators used it. And Trump used it. In fact, he lobbed it at every media site every chance he got. CNN proved particularly vulnerable. The left was horrified... this wasn't supposed to happen.

Well, since then, the left has tried repeatedly to shrink the term back to their original intent with various stories asking what fake news really means, and then attack conservatives in their analysis. None of these have been successful, however.

So anyways, this got me thinking. Is there real fake news? Obviously, there is some. The propaganda put out by Russian hackers or Huffpo or Brietbart is fake news. It is an attempt to create a scandal using opinion (genuine or otherwise) as fact and connecting dots using conspiratorial type mis-logic and wrongful suggestion. But is there something deeper that we are all missing? The more I thought about it, the more I realized there was: most of the news we see today is "fake news."

When you take a tour of most news sites, you are assaulted with a variety of articles that truly deserve the title of "fake news." Let me give you an example. Most news sites are now awash in "Twitter responded" or "the internet responded" articles. Trump said this and Twitter reacted. Ivanka was photographed here and now faces an internet backlash. Etc. These things are not genuine news in any way. What they are is the reporter having gone out to find random people to back up the opinion the reporter wants you to believe. These could be the only three tweets in the world to make this point. And even if they aren't, they are nothing but hot air... opinion is not news until someone chooses to turn their opinion into action which affects the world in some manner. "Bill thought about robbing a bank is not news."

Yet, this is becoming the preferred form of "news" because it's easy. It requires no sources, not research, no vetting, and no knowledge to create an article. It offers nothing concrete in any way. It changes nothing. But it sure sounds good, doesn't it? It sounds as if the reporter has somehow tapped deeply into a majority strain of public opinion and public interest. You now know what the public is thinking and what matters to them, right? Wrong. You know what this report wants you to think... that's all. This is as flimsy as if I wrote, "My neighbor backs me up on this!" Who cares?

"Comedian/Politician/Media Member/Internet freak makes fun of Trump for saying ___" is the exact same thing. So what? The guy at K-Mart said the opposite. Now what? In fact, this is even worse because this is just reporting the insults being flung by the opposition. They aren't even out of character. "Extra! Extra! Dog barks at cat!" Fake news.

I think the key lesson here is that we are already awash in a sea of fake news as untrained hacks half-ass their way through articles by taking quotes from Twitter or identifying the opinions of blogs and presenting them as facts of some sort that result in news, when all they really are is the opinion of the writer spoken through cherry picked quotes.

Thoughts?

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Sunday, January 7, 2018

Ain't No Mountain High Enough

by tryanmax

Over the Christmas/New Year holiday stretch, an amazing thing happened. A flurry of articles appeared across the conservasphere assessing President Trump’s first year in office and, to the apparent astonishment of many of the authors, it was actually pretty good! From Gorsuch to Tax Reform and a host of things in between, columnist after stubborn columnist had to agree, Trump moved the conservative agenda forward in a way that no one expected. Yes, there are a few campaign promises yet to be fulfilled, the border wall and an actual Obamacare repeal among them, but overall, the marks were high.

Still, there are a few holdouts that refuse to step down from the Never Trump bandwagon. And they were every bit as vocal as ever over the holiday season. The funny thing is, though, they’re running out of things to criticize aside from Trump’s personal bombast. At this point, most of the "conservative" complaints against Trump are just attacking the curtains. As I see them, they fall into three main (and very much overlapping) categories:

1) Trump did something I like, but I don't like the way he did it. This position holds that it isn’t enough for conservatism to win the day, but that the opponents of conservatism must like it, too. At best, these conservatives put winning hearts and minds above the actual work it takes to win hearts and minds. They want people to choose Coke as their favorite without ever tasting Coke first. At worst, they are being mirror-progressives. It’s this group that obsesses over Trump’s twitter account to the point of inflating his presence on the social media site. According to twittercounter.com, Trump tweets an average of 6 - 8 times per day. His critics are running digital rings around him.

2) Don't thank Trump, thank Congress. This position is disingenuous in a number of ways. The sudden return to a proper understanding of civics has nothing to do with giving credit where credit is due. We routinely credit the President for Congressional actions. The only reason to withhold credit this time is for the sake of it. Worse, it’s inconsistent. The same Never-Trumpers who want to credit Congress with conservative wins want to still saddle Trump with losses on things like Obamacare repeal and building the border wall, which require Congress to act. On these, they blame Trump for failing to rally Congress. And on some things, such as judicial appointments, the President and Congress work together. Congress can’t appoint anyone the President doesn’t nominate, but Never-Trump only credits the placement while ignoring the pick. Finally, this argument completely dismisses foreign policy and military achievements of which Congress isn’t even a part.

3) But Trump could still screw things up! This is a lame argument, but surprisingly popular. Of course Trump could still screw things up. An unseen asteroid could strike tomorrow, too! What’s your point? The question isn’t whether it could happen, but whether it’s likely and what makes you think so. Given that, after a year, all the things the critics assured us were indicative of Trump’s unfitness for office have shown, thus far, not to be so, what have you got? If anything, still holding onto the notion that a major screw up is just around the corner smacks of wishful thinking and perhaps an intention to blame anything on Trump regardless whether it’s his doing. If nothing else, it’s an amnesiac in its inattentiveness.

None of this is very surprising. A lot of people have staked their reputations on being Never Trump with more than a few rising out of obscurity on the movement. (I’m looking sideways at Tom Nichols, right now.) As long as there are people emotionally tied to the idea that Trump is the worst possible thing, they will find ways to discount, dismiss, and deny that he is anything other than the worst caricature imaginable.

Thoughts?

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Wednesday, January 3, 2018

Year End Clear Out Thoughts

Just cleaning out the attic to start the new year!

● The obsessives pushing the NCAA football playoffs swore that it would not make the other bowl games any less significant. No no no... it will make them even more important... somehow. Well, that was obvious BS and I've been predicting all along that it would destroy the current bowl system. It looks like I'm starting to be proved right.

Since the playoffs began, bowl attendance has been falling year after year. Bowls that regularly drew 40,000 to 60,000 in the past now find themselves drawing 20,000 to 40,000 -- the networks have needed to avoid showing the empty stands in many instances. Only six of 33 bowls distributed more than 50,000 tickets, with actual attendance being around 60% of tickets issued. The ninth best bowl this year had its worst attendance since 1957. A couple bowls had less than 10,000 attend. Ohio St. versus USC, a game premium featuring two storied teams with two potential top ten draft picks could sell only 67,510 tickets out of the 100,000 available.

What's more NFL-ready players are starting to drop out of bowl games so as not to get hurt, and the playoff pimps have taken to encouraging them because they see the bowls as "irrelevant exhibition games now that there's a playoff."

That these bowl games will keep fading until they collapse was an easily foreseeable result of creating a playoff system. With almost everyone in the media talking almost exclusively about the playoffs and the human trend to focus on what we are told is important to the detriment of everything else, it was clear that the herd would slowly stop caring about the other bowls.

● Michele Bachmann is back and ready to claim Roy Moore's mantle in Minnesota. Maybe she can finally oust the Muslim Brotherhood from their secret position running the US Government... but probably not. Most likely, she's just being paid to make sure the Democrats retain Al Franken's seat.

● Roy Moore aside, it's been a horrible year for the left. First, despite numerous tantrums, they managed to change nothing: the pussyhat movement died the same day they littered the parks with their placards as they raced to Starbucks to applaud themselves for raising awareness of their upsetness; Black Lives Matter brought out support for the cops which had been flagging; the #metooIwannabeharrassed movement achieved nothing and actually seems to have pushed the standard backward from their perspective... in fact, what the #metooIwannabeharrassed movement really did was (1) ravage the leftist media, (2) wipe out a lot of Democratic infrastructure in Hollywood, (3) expose Hollywood starlets as hypocrites who let other women get raped so they could be in films, (4) revive the right to challenge sex claims and revived due process, i.e. end the "every woman should be believed" crap, and (5) bring shame on a lot of leftists. Gays are nowhere to be seen as a political force, as predicted.

They haven't even been able to slow Trump either, who has had a vast number of conservative victories:

Kept the Supreme Court conservative... appointed vastly more federal appeals court judges (12) than Obama (3) or Bush (6)... let the military crush ISIS... got China to engage in North Korea... Iran appears to be in flames... backed Russia down... brought unemployment way down... growth-creating tax cuts... manufacturing at 20 year high... stock market spike... undid dozens of Obama's socialist/workers/environmentalist policies... reversed the government's position stripping away the rights of those accused of harassment... neutered Obamacare's individual mandate... opened ANWR to drilling... 23.7% drop in illegal immigration... reforms to the VA including adding whistleblower protection... and more. Trump even finished the year equal to Obama's first year in terms of popularity: 46% approve 56% disapprove.

And all the left can do is tear their hair out that Melania Trump wears heels, Trump Jr. took a photo with a confederate flag somewhere in the distance, Ivanka... well, she just pisses me off! And Donald eats at McDonalds and OMG I hate him so much!!!!! Ha ha.

Anyways, I wish you all a Happy New Year and all the best this coming year. Remember the things that are important and let the rest roll off your back. Happiness comes only to those who choose to be happy. Seriously. Decide to be happy this year! Have a great year, everyone!

Thoughts?

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